You Would Cry Too If It Happened To You

Expected Publication:  September 30th, 2014

Party Games (Fear Street)

By: R.L. Stine

St. Martin's Griffin

ISBN-13:  9781250051615

Her friends warn her not to go to Brendan Fear's birthday party at his family's estate on mysterious Fear Island.  But Rachel Martin has a crush on Brendan and is excited to be invited.  Brendan has a lot of party games planned.  But one game no one planned intrudes on his party -- the game of murder.  As the guests start dying one by one, Rachel realizes to her horror that she and the other teenagers are trapped on the tiny island with someone who may want to kill them all.  How to escape this deadly game?  Rachel doesn't know whom she can trust.  She should have realized nothing is as it seems...on Fear Island.  

Review

     When I was a kid I used to devour R.L. Stine's books, like they were my favorite candy or something!  I read most of the Goosebumps books, plenty of the off-shoot series, and the choose your own fate books.  But my absolute favorites, were the Fear Street books.  Something about that creepy Fier/Fear family and their curse (along with their tendencies towards evil) really drew me in to their world.  Most of the stories take place on Fear Street itself, which seems to have absorbed its namesake's evil.  Some are about the history of Fear Street and some are about the present.  My favorites were always the ones that combined the two (i.e. the Fear Park trilogy, the Fear Street Saga series, & the Fear Street Sagas [completely different and not to be confused]).  This wasn't one of them, but that's okay!  I was still extremely excited to read it.  There's still a very childlike part of me that loves a good scare.

     This book centers around a girl named Rachel Martin, who is the definition of average.  She's nothing special lookswise, her sister got all the brains, she has a hard time socializing, and her family isn't wealthy.  In fact, Rachel's father lost his job recently and now works at the Wal*Mart a town away at significantly less pay.  Her Mom has been sick with Lyme disease and unable to work.  So Rachel has taken a job waitressing at Lefty's, the local teen hangout, to help with the bills.  Imagine her surprise when wealthy, interesting (if somewhat geeky) Brendan Fear invites her to his birthday party out on Fear Island.  She's always had a crush on Brendan, so she ignores the warnings of her best friend Amy and slightly creepy, possessive ex-boyfriend Mac.  She's going to the birthday party and she has a good time doing it - until people start turning up dead.  Is Rachel going to be the next victim?  Is the island really haunted?  Can she get out of there alive, or will the Fear family's curse of evil claim another victim?

     There have been better books in this series.  But there have been worse too and people need to remember, it's a less than 200-page, pulpy teen horror book.  It's not meant to have deep character development or even be that well-written.  It's sole purpose is to provide the aforementioned horror and bring some scariness into your life!  It was fun reading for me, even if it wasn't the next YA classic novel.  It had some especially creepy scenes, including the deaths (or were they?) of the other kids and a pit on the island that Rachel gets trapped in.  Probably the only thing I really though was overkill, was the taxidermist ghost.  It wasn't creepy, just kind of bizarre.  Also, Brendan Fear is a gamer geek and doesn't really have that spark of sadistic evil in him quite like the other men and women of his lineage.  It was a little disappointing.  The whole thing with the murders was something I had figured out almost immediately.  But then a secondary plotline I wasn't at ALL expecting hopped on the train!  Overall, I enjoyed reading it.  This book definitely took me back to a less complicated time and made me feel creeped out in the most delicious way.  I think it's a great step back into the pond for R.L. Stine and a good introduction to the series for new readers.  A solid effort, for the pulpy novel it is.

VERDICT:  3/5  Stars

*I  received this book from St. Martin's Griffin, on NetGalley.  No favors or money were exchanged for this review.  The expected publication date is September 30th, 2014.*

If I Took You Home It'd Be A Home Run

Expected Publication: October 1st, 2012
Amber House
By: Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, & Larkin Reed
Arthur A. Levine Books
ISBN-13: 9780545434164

"I was sixteen the first time my grandmother died . . ."

Sarah Parsons has never seen Amber House, the grand Maryland estate that's been in her family for three centuries. She's never walked its hedge maze nor found its secret chambers; she's never glimpsed the shades that haunt it, nor hunted for lost diamonds in its walls.

But all of that is about to change. After her grandmother passes away, Sarah and her friend Jackson decide to search for the diamonds--and the house comes alive. She discovers that she can see visions of the house's past, like the eighteenth-century sea captain who hid the jewels, or the glamorous great-grandmother driven mad by grief. She grows closer to both Jackson and a young man named Richard Hathaway, whose family histories are each deeply entwined with her own. But when the visions start to threaten the person she holds most dear, Sarah must do everything she can to get to the bottom of the house's secrets, and stop the course of history before it is cemented forever.

Review

   Sarah Parsons is not really excited when she is forced to travel to Maryland with her feuding parents and little brother to attend her estranged Grandmother's funeral.  But once she's there, Sarah and her little brother Sammy both feel some sort of intrinsic connection to the family's ancestral home, Amber House, that neither can explain.  So they manipulate their Mom into staying for a few weeks until they can sell the house and everything in it.  During that time Sarah discovers that there might be a hidden fortune in diamonds and decides to find it with the help of Jackson, who is a distant cousin and the grandson of her Grandma's housekeeper Rose.  She also finds herself falling into the world of Richard Hathaway, the son of a Senator (who is her Mom's old boyfriend), as her Mom gets ready to throw her a lavish sixteenth birthday party that will double as an open house.  But as the day of the party draws near, more and more family secrets become exposed leaving Sarah to wonder if perhaps there is a sinister presence in the house after all.  And if there is, can she save herself and her family from it before it's too late?  So I was not really expecting to be drawn into this book as much as I was.  Then again, as a reader I can never resist a good family secret.  I loved Sarah because she was a very realistic, average teenager.  She never knew quite how to feel about either of her parents due to her Mom's cold tactless behavior and her Dad's infidelity.  As the constant caretaker of her autistic little brother Sammy, Sarah also feels like it's her responsibility to protect him no matter what, because she has an unexplainable psychic connection to him and always knows where he is.  She does find out that there are reasons behind her Mom's seemingly unexplainably mean behavior and that she has suffered a lot in her life.  Sarah gets to discover that nothing is black and white in the real world, which fleshes out the side characters very nicely.  There is a love triangle that is not quite a love triangle, a search for lost family treasure that turns into something much more dangerous and the possiblity of changing the past.  Sarah inherits the ability to see and be part of echos of the past that haunt the house.  She is privy to the actual happenings of her ancestors in a way that makes me geek out cause I'm a total history nerd.  I loved that the house was almost alive with the energy of the past.  The ending was perfect in my opinion and seriously made me want to cry because I found it beautiful.  Overall, one of the best books I've read so far this year and I highly recommend it to fans of romance, Gothic novels, ghosts, time travel and history.

VERDICT:  5/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book's expected publication date is October 1st, 2012.*